The report of the Nineteenth Congress of the CPC points out that by 2020, we will resolutely fight against pollution; by 2035, the ecological environment will be fundamentally improved, and the goal of beautiful China will be basically achieved. In terms of new deployment, it is proposed to promote green development, focus on solving outstanding environmental problems, strengthen ecosystem protection, and reform the ecological environment supervision system.

Guided by the conviction that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, in recent years, under the great attention of the Party Central Committee, localities have actively sought the balance between mining development and ecological protection according to local conditions, and green mine construction has entered the fast lane.

Green Mines Facing “Access Mechanism”

 “Under the background of the general implementation of the transformation and upgrading of ‘over-productivity removal’ of domestic mineral enterprises and the implementation of ‘green mine’ by the State, enterprises must transform and upgrade in order to survive.” Recently, said PENG Qiming, President  and Party Committee of China Mining Association in an interview.

In view of the green transformation of mineral enterprises, PENG Qiming said that the development and construction of green mines is an inevitable trend. “In this respect, both developed and developing countries are facing the same choice, and mining enterprises will not survive without green development in the future.”

PENG Qiming said that at present, the Ministry of Land and Resources is summing up the experience of green mine pilot projects. Future green mine construction will not be confined to pilot areas, but will establish a national standard system for green mines. Enterprises that fail to meet the standards in the future will be ordered to stop production and rectify it until the standards are met before continuing production. He said that it was planned to complete the evaluation of the pilot areas by the end of October and strove for a new “access mechanism” to be introduced as soon as possible.

On March 22, 2017, six departments including the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Green Mines”. The “Opinions” pointed out that the working mechanism of four-tier cooperation among departments should be established, policy support should be strengthened, and the process of green mine construction should be accelerated so as to form a new mining development mode that meets the requirements of ecological civilization construction by 2020. 

According to the “Opinions”, all new mines in the future will meet the requirements of green mine construction, and the production mines will accelerate the transformation and upgrading to gradually meet the requirements. Setting up a model of 1,000 green mines with science and technology leading and innovation driving, carrying out demonstrations of 100 green survey projects, building more than 50 demonstration zones for green mining development, and forming a number of new models, mechanisms and systems that can be replicated and promoted.

Point-to-surface Combination to Promote Green Mine Construction

In an interview, officials of the Ministry of Land and Resources said that green mine construction is “point” of which the main implementation body is mining enterprises; and green mining development demonstration area is “face” of which the main implementation body is local government. Select cities or counties with remarkable achievements in green mine construction, regard green mining development demonstration area as a platform for reform and innovation of mineral resources management system, give full play to the role of government guidance, promote technological innovation, management innovation and system innovation, and centralize and integrate green mine construction.

As a “point” of green mine construction, Dongzhi County, Chizhou City, Anhui Province, has achieved initial results. Around the goal of “the organic unification of lucid waters and lush mountains”, the local government strengthens the development supervision, improves the mine ecology, standardizes the mining order, and takes various measures to promote the creation of green mines. At the same time, in accordance with the requirements of the “Five Governance” of the city, adhering to the development idea of “Not only lucid waters and lush mountains, but also clear water and green mountains”, the county actively adapts to the new normal development of mining economy, and carries out mining renovation with iron wrist.

In addition, Dongzhi County has also formulated the “Implementation Plan of Comprehensive Mine Improvement”, according to the industrial policy, safety production and environmental protection management regulations, elaborated the measures and responsibilities of various departments in terms of optimizing the layout of mining areas, creating green mines and improving the ecological environment, and  determined the objectives, steps and time limits of regulation and construction. The plan points out that the mines that fail to meet the standard and violate the management measures of green mines should be suspended even shut down timely to ensure that by the end of 2020, the mining enterprises under production in the county will meet the standard of green mines.

It is reported that Dongzhi County started comprehensive mine renovation and green mine construction in October 2016, and established the county’s green mine liaison system. According to statistics, the county’s green mines have achieved preliminary results. By the end of April this year, four enterprises, Liuhe Huafeng, Yirui Mining, Jinxiang Mining and Qigang Mining, have invested 114 million yuan, 60% of the total investment. In the future, Dongzhi County will accelerate the establishment of green mines, and strive to build green mines with scientific mining methods, high efficiency of resource utilization, standardization of enterprise management, environmental protection of production processes, ecological mining environment, harmonious enterprise areas, and digitized supervision of mining areas.

 According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, 661 national green mines have been built in recent years. The responsibility mechanism for the mine environmental governance and restoration has been established. The central government has invested 30 billion yuan in the management of the mine environment, driven local financial and social capital investment of more than 60 billion yuan. The level of industrialization, specialization and socialization of mine geological environmental governance has been significantly improved.

Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets

According to the industry analysis, from the joint publication of “Opinions on Accelerating the Implementation of Green Mines” by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and other five departments, we can see that the central level government has put forward “real gold and silver” incentives from four aspects: land use, mining, finance and finance. Next, by formulating local green mine construction standards, summing up the formation of national industrial green mine standards, gradually introducing national mandatory standards and other steps, it is imminent to improve the formulation of green mine standards.

LI Hongwei, a professor at the Central Party School’s Ecological Civilization Construction Research Group, believes that green mining development is a new concept that follows the rule of natural resource value and follows the rules of market economy, and a path of “development in protection and protection in development” to achieve sustainable utilization of mineral resources and sustainable development of mining economy. The green development of mining industry should be upgraded to the green development mode, the allocation of mineral resources should be optimized by institutional innovation and the utilization level of mineral resources should be improved by scientific and technological innovation.

In LI Hongwei’s view, the main problem that restricts the green development of mining industry is the thinking inertia of “If there’s water, why not let it flow fast” which is the “extensive” mode of mining development. Some places are excessively intoxicated with the advantages of natural resources and solidified at the low end of the industrial chain, resulting in a single industrial structure and increased pressure on the ecological environment.

On October 23, at a press conference of the Nineteenth National Congress of the CPC, YANG Weimin, introducing the reform of China’s ecological civilization system in the past five years, said that the past achievements have attracted worldwide attention, but the ecological environment is still the short board of China’s development. He believed that to make up for this shortcoming, on the one hand, we should strengthen the construction of ecological civilization, on the other hand, we should reform the system of ecological civilization.

YANG Weimin said that the reform of the ecological civilization system is very exploratory. For example, in the process of ecological protection and environmental governance, the problem of intersecting departmental responsibilities has not been fundamentally solved, which needs to be further promoted according to the deployment of the Nineteenth National Congress. In addition, the government’s supervision needs to be strengthened in an all-round way, and the incentive mechanism needs to be further established. In the next step, we will speed up the reform of the ecological civilization system according to the deployment of Nineteenth National Congress, speed up the landing of the reform according to the problem orientation, and fill in the shortcomings and loopholes of the system as soon as possible.

LI Ganjie, Secretary of the Party Group and Minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said that promoting green development and strengthening the construction of ecological civilization are positively related to the development of the economy. He believes that from the past experience, environmental protection and economic growth complement each other. “When environmental protection is strengthening, environmental quality is improving. At the same time, our economic development has not been affected.”

--From the Economic Information Daily